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Thursday, October 18, 2012

Day 1 of regular exposures

Today
I dropped Zo off at his first day of daycare. We finally found a place
that we loved with enough diversity so that our little chocolate chip
wouldn’t be the only little brown boy in the institution. By word of
mouth, we found a quaint cottage-like Spanish immersion preschool run by
super cute ladies from Venezuela and Mexico. He loved it during our
tour and even attempted to hop out of my arms into the Director’s arms.
He was so smitten that I ignored the many dripping noses of the cute 1 year old kiddos who would be in his future class.This
morning I dropped him off around 8:45am. And he was one of the
drippy-nosed children. For the last 3 days he has been a sneezing,
coughing fussy fuss-face. Top it off with a set of 12 month old
immunizations and both parents with sore throats and sneezing and you
have entered our purgatory. I have flushed and aspirated his nose so many times that he anticipates what is coming and gets
his wail ready. He has woken up so many times in the past few nights
that I haven’t been able to lay down for more than 5 minutes
without hearing his coughing and whimpering. I can’t wait for this cold
to be over so that we can officially begin sleep training him. Add a
hectic Ward month with long nights and early mornings and all I can say
is that I am so tired. I am so very tired. As
I walked out, painted smile on my face, holding back the tears welling
up in my eyes, a cute cherubic girl smiled at me and motioned for me to
hold her hand. The Director hurriedly waved to one of the teachers so
that she could wipe away the thick yellow-green goo running from her
nose, sliding down her face. The teacher laughed nervously, I shrugged
knowingly. I have been around enough children to know clear, yellow, and
green ooze is somewhat of a rite of passage. Thus began Day 1 of our
son exposing others to his germs and his classmates exposing him to
theirs. Here’s to a robust immune system! Here’s to my growing Little
Man!

We had Stubble in a private home when I went back to work after his birth...then he hit pre-school the year before kindergarten. NONE of us was well for an entire YEAR - or at least that is how it seemed. Their immune system will be 'stimulated' sometime or another...better sooner.

Ah yes. I used to think having a cold was a big deal. Something that I hopefully only had to contend with 1-2 times per year. Post daycare, it's a way of life. I hear it gets better after a year or so. Until then, hang in there!

Mothers in Medicine is a group blog by physician-mothers, writing about the unique challenges and joys of tending to two distinct patient populations, both of whom can be quite demanding. We are on call every. single. day.

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